Batter my heart, three-personed God by John Doane

BATTER MY HEART, THREE-PERSONED GOD
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November 23, 2015
“Batter my heart, three-personed God” is a short poem made up of fourteen lines; also known as a sonnet. John Donne wrote this poem between 1609 and 1611. During this time, two types of sonnets were especially famous. The first one was the Shakespearean or English sonnet. The Italian or “Petrarchan sonnet” was the other common type of sonnets during this period. This paper summarizes and critically analyzes John Donne’s work.
In this work, the poet requests God to intensify the efforts to reinstate his soul. In the work, the speaker refers to God as three persons in one; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He implies that the gentle knocking is not sufficient, and God should aggressively storm into his heart. The author wants the three-personed God to come into his life in a cruel way rather than the compassionate way he was used to. Further down the poem, the speaker likens himself to a besieged town. The turning point in the poem comes about when the speaker admits his close relation to the enemy; probably Satan, yet he wants God into his life. Donne then asks God to break the ties he has with Satan and make him, his [God] slave, for only then can he be free 4.
John, in his “holy sonnets,” blends elements of both the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean sonnets. In this particular work, he starts with the typical Italian rhyme pattern abba abba, but his couplet rhyme in the …